‘Khaki on Broken Wings’ deals with three high profile cases that Amod Kanth, the author and former DGP, handled. The cases pertained to Romesh Sharma, a political and corporate honcho, Charles Sobhraj, an out and out criminal,, and Jessica Lal case which involved the sons of two of the most powerful politicians in the country, Vinod Sharma and DP Yadav in their time. A book review by Amitabh Srivastva
Now that 78 year old Charles Sobhraj is out of Nepal jail on medical grounds after serving 19 years out of the 20 he was sentenced to, those who want to understand the slimy criminal would once again turn to the BBC and Netflix thriller ‘The Serpent’ released on the OTT platform last year.
And Sobhraj who is always proud of his contacts with the media and lawyers would be the happiest man in the world. Because it would once again set off a chain of exclusive interviews for which he is highly paid.
But many journalists who had followed the case of Charles Sobhraj in India after his daring escape from the Tihar jail were hoping for more authentic reports on the international crook.
In an exclusive interview with Tehelka, Amod Kanth who had interrogated him for days together finds this very odd.
“I don’t know how women fell for him. Because for all his so-called charm the man is pure evil.’ because he has no moral compunction in swindling and eventually killing those who trusted him,” says Kanth.
Kanth maintains that he has never used third degree to get confessions even from hardened criminals but each criminal had a different key. Since the media, both national and international, had created a larger than life persona for Charles he decided to break down his ego.
He mentions that to bring him down to earth he never offered him a chair to sit down while interrogating him but made him sit down at his feet, literally.
Writing about the other high profile case of Jessica Lal murder that features in his second nook of memoirs, Amod Kanth confesses how all his well-wishers including his wife and seniors in the police advised him not to get into it again after news started streaming that her killers were going to be released by the highest court of the land while he who had done the initial investigation into the case and collected all evidence was posted far away from Delhi as DGP Arunachal Pradesh.
“But I returned to Delhi, met the Police Commissioner Ajay Raj Sharma and demanded an investigation into the tampering of the forensic evidence”, he says.
‘Khaki on Broken Wings’ deals with three high profile cases that he handled: Romesh Sharma, a political and corporate honcho, Charles Sobhraj, an out and out criminal, and Jessica Lal case where the villains were sons of two of the most powerful politicians in the country Vinod Sharma and D P Yadav in their time.
The book deals in great and irrefutable detail about the flaws in the legal, the criminal investigation and the media pressures because of his one habit – maintaining a daily diary.
Khaki on Broken Wings
(Police diaries book II)
Author- Amod K Kanth
Publisher-Bloomsbury India
Pages -310
Price -Rs.799
Available on Amazon
